Search All 1 Records in Our Collections

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The Museum’s Collections document the fate of Holocaust victims, survivors, rescuers, liberators, and others through artifacts, documents, photos, films, books, personal stories, and more. Search below to view digital records and find material that you can access at our library and at the Shapell Center.

Ester (Estusia) and Hanka (later Anna Heilman) Wajcblum, were the daughters of Jakub and Rebeka (Jaglom) Wajcblum. Both parents were Deaf. Ester was born in Warsaw in 1927 and Hanka, in 1928. Their older sister, Sabina, who married Mieczyslaw Zielinksi, spent the war in the Soviet Union. After the family was forced into the Warsaw ghetto, their father was assigned the task of making wooden crosses for grave markers at German military cemeteries. The family was deported to Majdanek in May 1943, where Jakub and Rebeka perished. Ester and Hanka were transferred to Auschwitz- Birkenau in September 1943, where they were assigned to forced labor at the Union munitions plant. After being recruited into the fledgling resistance movement by Ala Gertner, Ester and Hanka became involved in pilfering gunpowder from the munitions plant and transferring it to Roza Robota. She, in turn, transferred it to the Sonderkommando underground. On October 7, 1944 the gunpowder was used in blowing up crematorium IV in Birkenau. Ester was among the four young women who were arrested as co-conspirators. After being tortured, she was publicly hanged in Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 5, 1945. Hanka was later transferred to Neustadt Glewe labor camp, a sub-camp of Ravensbrueck, where she was liberated in May 1945 at the age of sixteen. After the war she immigrated to Palestine, where she married Joshua Heilman in March 1947.

Learn about over 1,000 camps and ghettos in Volume I and II of this encyclopedia, which are available as a free PDF download. This reference provides text, photographs, charts, maps, and extensive indexes.